


Without her, live no life

by middlemarch



Category: A Discovery of Witches (TV), All Souls Trilogy - Deborah Harkness
Genre: Conversations, F/M, Mates, Romance, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-11-07 19:21:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20822498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: "When you're gone, my life will be over," he said. Diana wanted to know why.





	Without her, live no life

“Matthew, you told me when I’m gone, your life would be over,” Diana said. Everyone had left her aunts’ farmhouse, they were alone with the hollowed-out pumpkins she’d lit with her finger, a child’s trick she’d only just mastered. There was a chill in the air that meant night was falling. 

“Yes, _mon coeur_. I did. It’s a gift you’ve given me, a chance to be a man again. To be within time and not outside it,” Matthew replied seriously, still holding her hand in his but not leaning over to kiss her cheek or the corner of her mouth. She could almost imagine she saw a glint of silver at his temples.

“It’s because I’m your mate?”

“Yes. Because you are the other half of me, my soul’s companion,” he said.

“But Ysabeau and Miriam, they’ve survived their mates,” Diana said, keeping her voice soft, knowing she might have to abandon the conversation. She’d found Matthew was implacable, steely, resolute—except when he wasn’t. When he was sensitive, vulnerable, fragile as glass. Marthe had said a few words to her alone before they’d left Sept-Tours, a few carefully chosen words that had told Diana what her abduction had meant to Matthew. Diana had heard Matthew weep in the night after Juliette’s attack, she’d woken to his hitching breath against her shoulder, his tears warmed by her skin.

“Yes, they have. Survived,” he said.

“Why wouldn’t you? Why wouldn’t you try to?” she asked. 

“_Mon âme_, we’re not all made the same, you know that,” he said.

“You mean as people or how vampires are made?” Matthew laughed, a rich low sound like brandy, like a firelit hearth in the depth of a New England winter.

“Nothing gets past you. I hadn’t thought but you’re right. It’s both. I don’t have the strengths Ysabeau and Miriam do, the commitment, the curiosity. And Ysabeau, she made me when I wanted to die. When I thought I did because I’d lost the ones I loved,” Matthew said.

“Do you regret it?” If he said yes, how much would it hurt?

“I spent a century regretting it, in the most obnoxious, destructive ways I could think of. I suppose I cannot regret it now, not since I found you. Since I found I am still capable of loving to an inconceivable degree, foolishly, bravely, like a young man. Like an old man who understands how rare being known is. Being loved,” Matthew said.

“Or maybe it’s just that I’m a witch,” Diana said because it was true and it was a risk to Matthew, to talk so before they would time-walk.

“What do you mean?”

“Ysabeau and Miriam, they mated with other vampires. But I’m a witch. Maybe, even if you didn’t think it when you said it, that’s what made it true, that my life defines yours now. Because I’m a witch. Because my magic is not yours. What there is between us, it’s like a flower no one has seen in a thousand years. No one knows how long it blooms, but they know petals always fall,” Diana said.

“Perhaps you’re right,” Matthew said.

“Maybe we’ll find out when we leave here,” Diana said. “Maybe our future lies in the past.”

“Or maybe my historian is just eager to see where we’re going,” Matthew smiled.

“Maybe,” Diana echoed him, tugging on his hand to draw him inside. It was dark now, the night lit by her magic and the few stars that dared to appear. There was a candle to light in their bedroom, a step to take. There was another witch somewhere in time to tell her the answers to her questions.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a Tumblr gif-set and logic, I give you Diana challenging Matthew to give her a reasonable explanation. Title is taken from Shakespeare, but I substituted "her" for "him."


End file.
